IFPI demands $2.5m in damages from The Pirate Bay

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is demanding $2.5m in damages from Swedish torrent tracking site The Pirate Bay.

The compensation claim, which covers 24 CDs, nine movies and four games, was served at the Stockholm District Court on Monday.

All four Pirate Bay founders (Gottfried Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström) have been indicted for breaking copyright law. The fine was determined by counting the number of times the 24 albums were downloaded, but the four founders say the numbers are pure fantasy.

Gottfried Svartholm Warg told Swedish publication The Local that "the record companies can go screw themselves".

The court case is the IFPI's latest attempt to outlaw The Pirate Bay in Europe. In February, it forced Tele2 to block all access to The Pirate Bay in Denmark, although the ISP says it will counter sue.

Swedish telecoms firm TeliaSoneria also received a letter from the IFPI, but says blocking and filtering actions are illegal under EU law.

Swedish Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask recently said she is determined to clamp down on file sharing. However, a proposal which called for ISPs to shut down subscribers who repeatedly download films and music illegally was rejected.

The Pirate Bay was also indicted in January by public prosecutor Håkan Roswall, who demanded a $188,000 fine for copyright infringement. The Motion Picture Association and an organisation that represents Swedish producers and distributors of movies and games are also expected to file charges.

The Pirate Bay has always argued that it's a tracking site, not a hosting site. ®